Regardless of scar source or type, almost every person has or will have one or more cosmetically undesirable scars of some magnitude on their face or body. It is well known that scarring generates negative emotional problems, damaging confidence and self-esteem. Additionally, depending on scar severity and location, the scar itself may create functional problems for the person, such as restricting movement around the location of the scar or making certain garments unwearable. Similarly, although perhaps not as emotionally and physically challenging, wrinkles often present a similar problem in that for various reasons they become undesirable features of a person's skin.
Unfortunately, treatment and camouflaging of skin, whether for scars or wrinkles, are frequently treated as separate issues. Thus, attempts to treat skin are often ill-suited for camouflaging skin and vice versa. To illustrate, camouflaging of scars aids in mitigating some of the self-esteem issues associated with having such scars. However, scar camouflaging products frequently require application one or more times a day and have a negligible impact on the actual condition of the scar. Thus, the scar is merely masked, not treated. Similarly, wrinkles are often camouflaged with make-up, but typically not treated to adequately alleviate the condition.
Conversely, treatment of scars, or wrinkles, generally requires repeated courses of a given treatment, wherein the given treatment course may last days, weeks, months, or even years. During this often lengthy treatment regimen, the need to camouflage the skin still exists, yet this need is inadequately met by the prior art. Furthermore, known skin treatments require daily or almost daily application, which results in diminished user compliance.
Therefore, there is a strong need in the art for a synergistic skin treatment that addresses both the healing and cosmetic aspects of skin management, which minimizes the curing times and the frequency of required use for such management, in order to encourage higher user compliance rates. It is to these ends that the present invention has been developed.